Another possibility is that the mother got under dropping floor (from cave-in) while carrying baby. Happened to me once, Mother was bed ridden for years. The baby had head injury, grew to child normally, then decided to run towards orc ambush (which was loooooong distance away) even though I had ordered dwarves to stay inside. Suicide, of course.

I like to think that the head injury caused the child to behave that way...

I had a baby lose a few chunks once while his mother was pumping out a river to make an obsidian cast. One of the remaining sturgeon decided to have a bit of baby bacon. Nasty wound, trail of blood for 10 or so squares. I didn't think babies had that much in them!

I know it's unrealistic, but I can't help but imagine little bearded babies for dwarves. In my mind, they come out of the womb fully bearded. That's how the mother carries them around, too, she just drags them around by the beard or ties it to her belt. When the father's on duty, he just ties their beards together and the baby just kind of hangs there, swinging to and fro with Urist McDaddy's movements.

I know it's unrealistic, but I can't help but imagine little bearded babies for dwarves. In my mind, they come out of the womb fully bearded. That's how the mother carries them around, too, she just drags them around by the beard or ties it to her belt. When the father's on duty, he just ties their beards together and the baby just kind of hangs there, swinging to and fro with Urist McDaddy's movements.

I know it's unrealistic, but I can't help but imagine little bearded babies for dwarves. In my mind, they come out of the womb fully bearded. That's how the mother carries them around, too, she just drags them around by the beard or ties it to her belt. When the father's on duty, he just ties their beards together and the baby just kind of hangs there, swinging to and fro with Urist McDaddy's movements.

I hda a baby with two mangled hands and a mangled right upper leg a bit ago, a result of a fire imp attack on her mother. She crawled around injured for a while, grew into a child, then got drug into a bed, where she sat until she healed. Healed before she even reached maturity, though.

This is the same dwarf in the "Whats going on in your fort?" thread. Both her parents are dead.

If only my map had bats on it.

Logged

Q: What do you get when you take 100 clear glass windows, 1000 silver bars, 6700 gold bars, and 18,000 marble blocks?

"Alright, here's Helltooth... Harborfence... Urist, come get GenericBlade... and you. Welcome to the Danger Room. First timers get good ol' Ballswallowed. Have fun and try not to take off your own toe."

If the mother is dead dwarves will bring food and water to the baby like any other injured dwarf.

Well, if they don't go insane that is. In one of my old aboveground megacities, not one but TWO babies suicided by jumping from the top floor of a 12 Z-level high skyscraper (highest of the three skyscrapers I had constructed) and splattered all over my prison's roof. I only found the first baby's remains after the second one died, before that time it was a mystery how the "Baby has collided with an object" death message happened. I constructed a ramp and the dwarves took the remains (first baby was bones and second was a fresh corpse) into their tombs from the prison roof.

They suicided because their parents got killed in a siege.

Logged

Quote from: madjoe5

Dwarf Fortress: The game in which people place abducted children in a furnace to see what happens.